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Omura 180x - New Stone for JKS

I've had this stone and been testing it for about a year now and I've found myself using it more and more when making large repairs to wide bevels, you know flattening out uneven yanagiba/usuba blade roads, etc.

It's a very fast wearing stone but it cuts fast too, it's magic is in the release partciles which turns into slurry and cuts like crazy. The trick to being successful with coarse stones like this is to flatten (often) as you work. This keeps the knife in contact with a flat surface which makes for faster grinding, if you let it begin to dish it dishes faster and faster and your bevel gets wonky quick. This is a big stone - it'll last awhile for sure so.....Flatten, flatten, flatten!

I keep this stone, the large pink brick 220x (that we sell), the Beston 500x, and Jon's Gesshin 400x as my primary go to coarse stones. The pink brick 220x and Omura 180x are used for heavy grinding on wide bevels, the Gesshin 400x for refinement/clean up on wide bevels, and the Beston 500x for double bevels (this gets used more in this role than anything else I have because it makes a perfect flat bevel since it doesn't dish). So if you want a complete coarse arsenal those are my picks.

If you're just looking for that one really coarse stone to do some heavy grinding then I'd chose either the pink brick 220x (makes deeper scratches but stays flat longer) or the Omura 180x. I need them both myself because sometimes one works better than the other, just depends on what knife it is. Hint - the Omura works better on Honyaki!

How would you compare this to the omura 150? The omura 150 feels super gritty to me, like chunks of concrete in the slurry gritty, yet it seems to leave a finish with a scratch pattern finer than the slurry would indicate.

How would you compare this to the omura 150? The omura 150 feels super gritty to me, like chunks of concrete in the slurry gritty, yet it seems to leave a finish with a scratch pattern finer than the slurry would indicate.

It's not far from that actually except I wouldn't say chunks, more like granules.